Explosions
by openPandora'sBox
Summary: Just a series of mostly unrelated drabbles and one shots dealing mainly with Felicity Smoak and Oliver Queen. I'll be posting here until I can work something out for a longer fic featuring these two. What can I say? Felicity Smoak is pretty awesome and deserves more attention.
1. Things We Don't Say

_Oliver goes to Felicity with a request. Again. _

_She suspects he's not being entirely honest. Again._

* * *

"So, explain to me one more time exactly what you were doing with this."

"Will that help you fix it?"

"No, but it'll definitely get me a round of drinks at the next IT bar night."

Oliver pressed his lips together and cocked an eyebrow at Felicity. His blue eyes glinted with something like exasperation and just a touch of amusement.

Felicity started to roll her eyes before she caught herself and cleared her throat instead. "Not that I would use it, of course."

"Of course," Oliver repeated, nodding.

"Or if I did," Felicity began slowly. Oliver's eyes narrowed. "I wouldn't make any mention of whose hard drive it was, how it came into my possession, or what I ended up getting off of it?" She looked up at him from where she was seated behind her desk, eyes wide and the corners of her mouth moving upwards to form a hesitant smile.

Oliver exhaled slowly through his nose, saying nothing. His eyes remained fixed on hers until she heaved a sigh and looked down at the damaged hard drive she held in her upturned palm.

"Fine, fine, fine," she said. She turned it over in her hands, carefully examining the ports to determine whether or not they could still be functional.

"Can you fix it?" Oliver asked after nearly a minute of watching her in silence.

Felicity jumped slightly at the sound of his voice as though she'd forgotten he'd even been in the room with her. She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose from where they'd slid down and desperately hoped she wasn't turning an embarrassing shade of fuschia.

"Honestly? You're probably better off just getting a new one."

Oliver fixed her with another stare.

"Or," Felicity gently placed the hard drive onto her desk and began rummaging through a drawer for the right data cable. "I could try and save your vacation pictures."

Felicity paused mid-search to fix Oliver with a stare of her own over the top of her glasses. She wasn't an idiot and she didn't appreciate being lied to, so she figured she'd give him the chance to change his story. Not that it mattered. He was her boss after all. She'd do the thing simply because he'd asked her to do it, but she liked to think there was a principle she was upholding.

Oliver didn't flinch and so Felicity resumed her search. "If the port's too damaged to plug anything in, I'll have to open it up and see if I can't reinstall the circuits into another body." She yanked open another drawer when the first proved to not contain what she needed. "That's probably going to take longer than you're willing to wait."

"Is that your way of kicking me out?"

"What?" Felicity's head snapped up. "No! It's just that it'll take hours to do and I've got some computer diagnostics to run for accounting, so that'll slow me down as well."

Felicity's eyes widened when she realised what she'd said and she raced to correct herself. "Not that this isn't important and if you want me to do this first, I can." She thought about the fact that the head of accounting was practically hysterical and winced. "Probably."

"Felicity." Oliver took a step forward and leaned over her desk slightly. He watched her eyes flicker across his face as she tried to figure out what he was about to do. "It's fine. I'd like this done as soon as possible, but not at the expense of your work."

He allowed himself a small smile in an attempt to reassure her. The look on her face and the way she narrowed her eyes at him told him he'd probably achieved exactly the opposite. Sighing quietly, he stood straight.

"Just do it whenever you can," he said gently.

"Got it." Felicity relaxed and smiled up at him. "That's good 'cause you should see Robertson." At Oliver's blank stare, Felicity clarified with a wave of her hand as she turned back towards her open drawer, "Head of accounting. He's been all over the place ever since we switched to a newer operating system. You'd think it's the end of the world or something the way he's going on about the computers ruining his system for filing his weekly data sheets."

Felicity yanked a cable out of the overstuffed drawer and slammed it onto her desk with a triumphant smirk.

"I tried to tell him the end of the world wasn't until December and it probably wouldn't happen because of Microsoft anyway - " Oliver frowned, more confused by her rambling than usual, but she was too busy with the hard drive to notice, " – but you know accountants. Practically ripped my head off. Can't take a joke."

She glanced up at Oliver's decidedly unsmiling face.

"And apparently neither can certain other people," she muttered under her breath.

Oliver pretended not to have heard. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Right." Oliver took a step back towards the doorway. "So you'll give me a call when that's ready."

"Of course, yeah," Felicity replied without looking up. She'd quickly decided the body of the hard drive was unsalvageable and had started carefully opening it up with the edge of a small flathead screwdriver.

"And I don't need to tell you that this should stay between you and me."

This time Felicity did glance up, her brow furrowed. "You've never needed to say it before."

"Right." Oliver hoped the smile he was attempting a second time conveyed an apology. A thought as to why he was even apologising briefly flickered through his head.

"Some vacation, huh?" Felicity caught his eyes with her own. Her gaze was assessing, discerning, as though she were ready to figure him out from whatever he said next. There was a heaviness to her stare that Oliver wasn't used to from her and it made him pause. It made him rethink the lie on the tip of his tongue.

Oliver's smile tightened. He simply nodded in response, turned swiftly, and walked out of her small office.

Felicity held her breath as she watched him leave. She exhaled heavily a good ten seconds later and shook her head at herself. Looking down at the burnt casing and water damaged circuitry, she heaved another sigh.

"You know, Felicity," she spoke under her breath to herself. "Considering the fact that any moment you could piss off Oliver Queen and lose your job, you really should probably update that resume." She scrunched up her nose at the distasteful thought.

"Conversely," she continued conversationally as she carefully began to unscrew the damaged circuit boards from their bottom casing. "You could just learn to shut the hell up."

* * *

_Feedback is always appreciated...especially since these two are entirely new to me and I don't have much to go on._


	2. Alarms Will Ring

_Felicity is attacked because of something she learns while doing a job for Oliver. _

* * *

It hadn't even crossed Oliver's mind that she would be the one hurt by his forays into the underworld of Starling City. He understood collateral damage. He understood the workings of a scheming mind better than any person rightly should. He even understood the insistent pull of curiousity on an agile mind, but he'd somehow managed to overlook the fact that the person he'd entrusted to salvage information off of a badly damaged hard drive might become suspicious once she realized he'd been lying to her. Again. He should have known better.

Stupid, Oliver viciously reprimanded himself. Not only stupid because it had resulted in an innocent woman getting hurt, but because it meant that he was growing too comfortable and too complacent. He'd gone to her with the damaged hardware because she was the best person he knew to retrieve the information he needed. She was smart, quick, and despite an overt fondness towards sarcasm and a tendency to talk through every silence, he'd trusted her to get the job done with discretion.

Oliver shook his head angrily as he impatiently waited for the traffic light to turn green. The moment it did he accelerated out of the intersection, the engine on his motorcycle revving loudly. Weaving in and out of the usual long line of cars during Starling City's rush hour traffic, he couldn't quite stop himself from furiously cursing her for getting involved. He figured it'd be best to vent his frustration on the road than on her in the hospital.

He parked quickly without thinking seconds after pulling up to the hospital and stalked through the automatic doors leading to the emergency room.

"I'm looking for Felicity Smoak," he told the nurse at the admitting station.

The nurse cast him a shrewd look before turning to glance at his computer screen and asked, "Relative?"

"Boss."

"Not really."

Oliver turned around at the sound of Felicity's voice. She was slowly pushing herself out of a chair in the waiting area, one hand bandaged, the other arm in a sling, and a vicious bruise forming along her jaw and the side of her face.

Oliver carefully scrutinized the way she favoured her right side as she moved slowly towards him. She was obviously fighting the urge to limp and he concluded that she'd injured her leg and probably her torso if the shallow breaths she was taking were any indication.

He glared at her. "What are you doing here?"

Felicity waived her bandaged right hand in his face, wincing when the movement pulled on sore muscles. "I'd give you a rundown, but I think the visual's probably enough and it'd probably take an hour to go through it all anyway."

Oliver's gaze hardened, his steely blue eyes catching her tired ones. "Why aren't you in a bed?"

Felicity shrugged before she could think better of it. Oliver reached out to steady her with a hand on her uninjured arm when she swayed on her feet.

"There isn't much they can do here that I can't do at home," she replied, squeezing her eyes shut to ward off the dizziness.

Oliver took in her pale and drawn face, the lines of pain crossing her forehead, every bruise and scratch along her cheek and jaw, and turned back towards the nurse at the admitting station.

"She needs to be admitted." Oliver's tone brooked no argument, but the nurse merely spared a second to glare at him for interrupting another patient. Felicity sighed loudly behind him.

"You're being admitted," Oliver declared over his shoulder.

"You're being weird," Felicity replied as she stepped around him and began to carefully walk towards the main doors.

Oliver clenched and unclenched his jaw as he watched her hobble towards the doors. "Where are you going?"

Felicity waved with her good hand towards the door as she walked, too exhausted to repeat what she considered to be blatantly obvious.

Oliver exhaled slowly and pushed away the wave of aggravation he felt at her stubbornness. She was hurt, probably scared, and he wouldn't be helping the situation by fighting her. She would give back as good as she got, but he needed to make her understand that a hospital bed would be the best place for her considering her injuries.

And the safest considering he still needed to hunt down the bastard who'd done this to her, he thought darkly.

Catching up to her quickly, he let his hand ghost along the small of her back, ready to catch her as they continued walking in silence. They managed to reach the ambulance bay and pick up area just outside the main doors before Felicity stopped to catch her breath.

Oliver watched his breath form icy vapour, watched it float in front of his face and slowly disappear. He heard the distant sound of sirens slowly getting louder and as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat, he thought of taking it off and putting it around Felicity's hunched shoulders. Her coat must have been lost somewhere along the way because she stood beside with only a thin sweater to ward off the chilly morning air.

"What are you doing here?" Felicity's quiet question broke through the silence between them.

Oliver didn't respond and started to remove his coat instead. Felicity stopped him with a raised hand, shaking her head.

"Don't," she spoke, her voice firm, harder than it had been before despite her exhaustion. "I like the cold."

Oliver lowered his hands slowly, pushing them back into his pockets. He hated the cold - hated that it felt familiar to him.

Felicity fixed him with a gaze almost as icy as the frosty vapour between them. She had her injured arm pressed tightly against her chest, she couldn't stand up straight, and she was squinting slightly from the pain as she looked up at him, but he could read the steely resolve in her eyes and in the tension gathered in every muscle.

Gritting his teeth, lips pressed tightly together, Oliver turned away to stare sightlessly into the parking lot beyond.

"Walter called to tell me you'd been attacked," he said curtly.

Felicity didn't shift her gaze from the side of his face. "Why?"

Oliver inhaled slowly. He fought down the instinct to lie. "Because I asked him to."

Felicity frowned, confused. "You asked him to call you if I were ever attacked? You usually assume people you know are going to be attacked?"

Oliver remained silent; the only response he gave her was the steady clench of the muscles in his jaw.

Sighing as she turned away, Felicity rolled her shoulders to try and lessen the painful tension in her back. Her injured shoulder protested the movement and she hissed at the stab of pain that radiated down her spine.

The sirens that had been faint when they'd first stepped outside were ear-splitting as an ambulance sped into the emergency room's ambulance bay. Oliver and Felicity stood silently side by side, watching as hospital personnel came rushing out and converged around the gurney being lowered from the back of the ambulance. The mass of people disappeared back through the doors, the paramedics briskly calling out vital signs, as quickly as they'd appeared. The sirens stopped shrieking and the usual morning sounds rushed to fill the void.

"Look, Oliver," Felicity began. She didn't turn to look at him as she spoke, content to watch her breath float away instead. She could feel the heat of him against her side and briefly wished she'd accepted his coat. "This wasn't your fault."

Oliver frowned. "That's not-"

"Don't," Felicity interrupted him harshly. She turned to glare at him, blue eyes cold and hard. When he refused to look at her, she stepped around and directly in front of him, fixing him with an icy stare. "Don't lie to me when I'm trying to make you feel better."

"Sorry." Oliver found the word coming out of his mouth before he could stop it.

Felicity's shoulders relaxed, but her eyes refused to soften. "I get that you have secrets and I'm in no position to ask or to expect you to tell me what they are. But," Felicity paused when she realized that her voice had risen louder than she'd meant it to.

"But," she repeated more softly, voice hard and quiet. "I won't have you treating me like an idiot."

Oliver shook his head once, twice. "I don't think you're an idiot."

"No," Felicity allowed. "You just treat me like one."

Oliver bit back the automatic apology bubbling up in his throat. He breathed through the frustration and just looked at her. She'd been beaten and bruised; one arm in a sling, the other wrapped. She probably had a few bruised ribs and a sprained ankle and yet, somehow, she still managed to find the energy to make him feel about three feet tall. And yet as admirable as he found her spirit, she could have been killed and he'd been the one who'd put the hard drive containing dangerous information right in the palm of her hand.

Oliver's head fell back, his eyes falling shut as he exhaled heavily. "You weren't supposed to look at the files."

"I needed to make sure the data hadn't been corrupted," Felicity replied matter-of-factly. "And you'd said they were vacation pictures."

"You didn't believe me," Oliver accused.

"I wanted to."

There was nothing Oliver could say to that. There was nothing Oliver wanted to say to that. If he allowed himself the luxury of dwelling on that particular thought for too long he figured he'd become entirely too well acquainted with the knot of guilt tightening his stomach. He instead decided to ignore it with the same steadfast determination he used to ignore the ever-present pain of his scars.

"If I asked you to," Oliver turned to face Felicity as he spoke, forming the words carefully in his mouth, "would you spend the night in the hospital?"

Felicity frowned up at him and shot him a questioning look. She parted her lips to reply, but he quickly interrupted her by placing both of his hands gently on her shoulders and lowering his face until it was merely inches away from hers. Her eyes widened in surprise, mouth snapping shut.

"Please don't ask me why," Oliver said quietly. "I don't want to lie to you. Just trust-" Her eyes narrowed at that and Oliver inhaled sharply. "I know I don't deserve it – your trust. But I need it."

Felicity's clear blue eyes bore into him, searching his face. He didn't know what she was looking for, didn't know what expression to plaster across his face or into his eyes that would convince her of his honesty. Whatever it was, she must have found it because he could read the agreement flash across her face and it felt like a tightness he hadn't realized gripped his chest was being slowly eased. He couldn't stop the corners of his lips from turning up into a small smile.

"Are you asking?" Felicity asked, the question floating between them in the frosty air.

Oliver nodded.

"Great," Felicity groaned and hung her head. "Now they're probably going to make me undergo another CAT scan for changing my mind so quickly. They'll think they missed a concussion or a brain bleed or cancer or something equally as horrible that requires more tests."

Oliver frowned at the top of her head. "Changing your mind? I thought you'd been discharged."

"Not exactly," was Felicity's reluctant response.

"What does 'not exactly' mean?"

"It means that I maybe might have signed myself out against the doctor's orders."

Oliver heaved a sigh. "Of course you did."

Raising her head back up to meet his eyes, Felicity noted the faint sparkle of amusement he couldn't quite manage to hide quickly enough from her and bit back a smirk.

"Want to use some of that Queen charm to help get me out of those tests?"

Oliver tilted his head to one side, his face resuming its usual stony set.

Felicity nodded thoughtfully. "Stony silence works too. Very intimidating. Good plan. Not everyone goes for charm."

He raised an eyebrow at that.

"Charm makes people suspicious," Felicity spoke in a loud whisper. She shrugged as if she couldn't be bothered either way, wincing in pain as she did.

Turning serious, Oliver carefully turned her back around towards the emergency room doors. "Come on. You're going back inside."

"No tests."

"All the tests."

Felicity shuddered. "I hate tests."

"You know," Oliver said thoughtfully as he guided her back to the nurse's station. "I never would have guessed that."

Oliver stayed with her as she was taken through the process of being admitted, stepping away only once to call Diggle and ensure that he'd be around while Oliver took care of the person who'd put Felicity in the hospital in the first place. The nurse had been less than impressed to see the two of them again, but Oliver guessed that he was probably less than impressed by most of the people he saw and most of what happened on a daily basis.

"Shit," Oliver swore suddenly and jolted away from where he'd been casually leaning against a wall.

Felicity's head snapped up towards him. "What happened?"

"Did you see a bike when we were out front?"

Felicity brow furrowed in thought, but she shook her head after a few seconds. "Where'd you park it?"

Oliver cursed colourfully under his breath. "I didn't."

* * *

_Feedback is never not appreciated._


	3. Are You Listening?

_The prompt was: Oliver dancing with Felicity at A Queen's office party._

_So that's what this is...only fluffier than I had intended...and taking place during Christmas because, well, t'is the season, right?. And if you attempt to think about Oliver and fluff in the vicinity of each other, you'll understand why I wanted to tear my hair out while writing this._

* * *

"Why is Oliver Queen walking towards us?"

"Wha-" Felicity mumbled as she looked up from her small plate piled with appetizers. She'd just popped a tender-looking morsel of spinach puff pastry into her mouth and had been rewarded with an explosion of delicious flavour after saving herself since breakfast for the fantastic catering that always accompanied a Queen Consolidated office Christmas party. She had been looking forward to slowly savouring the small feast she'd accumulated from the buffet table. Well, she certainly had been until her partner in culinary appreciation had pointed out the possible trajectory of a certain billionaire. The food went sour in her mouth and she swallowed it down with difficulty.

"He's not," she replied hoping it was true. She turned with her back to the room. She figured if she couldn't see it happen then it simply wouldn't.

"He is," her friend declared with an arched eyebrow and just about as casually as she reported the weekly financial reports to her supervisor in accounting. Felicity scowled at her.

Her friend simply shrugged in response. "Just giving you a heads up is all."

"And why," Felicity popped another pastry into her mouth as she spoke, "would I need a heads up?"

Rhiannon tossed her dark auburn hair over one shoulder, plucking a pastry off of Felicity's plate before the blonde could move it away. Felicity glared at her fiercely and moved a hand over the plate to protect the rest of her haul.

"Maybe because Oliver Queen wouldn't be walking towards us for me, but for a certain IT specialist I have it on good authority has been doing special secret side projects for him," Rhiannon answered in a loud whisper, smiling brilliantly when Felicity blinked at her incredulously.

"Don't bother denying it," Rhiannon continued smugly. Pouting when Felicity pulled her plate away to prevent her from grabbing another pastry, she took a sip of her red wine instead. "I have a very reliable source."

Felicity rolled her eyes as she chewed. Swallowing, she shook her head at her friend. "Claire is not a source, she's your girlfriend."

Rhiannon shrugged. "And sometimes when we're not otherwise engaged," Rhiannon raised her eyebrows suggestively, her green eyes sparkling, "we talk about work and work people and people who visit our work people." Rhiannon took another sip of her wine before emphatically adding, "At work."

"I get it. I get it." Felicity waved a hand holding a smoked salmon hors d'oeuvre. "Stop flaunting your functional relationship in my face." Felicity cocked her head to one side and frowned. "Where is your better half anyway?"

Rhiannon's face darkened. "Your dick of a supervisor decided to live up to his calling as the worst human being on the planet again and stuck Claire with a last minute project."

"Why didn't she say anything? I don't need to be here and you two have barely seen each other these past couple of weeks."

Rhiannon shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I was planning on ditching you and bringing Claire some food soon anyway."

Biting into the smoked salmon hors d'oeuvre, Felicity shook her head in disgust at the situation. "He really is the worst human being."

"Who is?"

Felicity jolted in surprise at the voice of Oliver Queen behind her, the shock causing her to choke slightly on the small bits of the appetizer she had yet to swallow. Eyes watering from the effort it took not to hack and cough, Felicity glared daggers at Rhiannon who was sipping her wine again with too much satisfaction.

She turned around to face Oliver, brushing her loose hair out of her face. Her first attempt at a reply sounded more like a wheeze, so she raised a finger in acknowledgement while she struggled to get her breath back.

Oliver held out his glass to her. She shook her head to decline it. The liquid looked clear, but all vodka was going to do was make her cough for a different, equally as unpleasant reason.

"It's water," Oliver explained.

Felicity accepted the glass gratefully.

"I came over here to ask you to dance."

Felicity choked on the water she'd been in the process of swallowing. Oliver looked concerned as he quickly reached to take back the glass she thrust towards him.

"Oh, she'd love to dance," Rhiannon replied enthusiastically over Felicity's shoulder. She reached around the coughing blonde to remove the plate of food from Felicity's grasp. "I'm just going to go ahead and replenish this with some of those spinach pastries you love and take them up to Claire." She handed Felicity her half-finished glass of wine. "You'll need that. I'll get myself a new one before I head up. You kids have fun."

Felicity attempted to glare at Rhiannon's back as she all but sauntered away, but the tears clouding her vision were making it rather difficult to distinguish one back from any other in the room. Instead, she looked up at a patiently waiting Oliver and held up her hand once more. His face was generally about as readable as the stone face of a cliff, but she thought she caught a flicker of amusement cross his face so she figured she had at least a few more seconds to settle herself before he walked away out of annoyance.

Once she could take a full breath without engaging in another coughing fit, she raised the glass in her hand to her mouth and downed its contents in one gulp.

The corner of Oliver's mouth lifted in what could have been called a smile if one were being generous with the term. "So you do know how to drink."

Felicity made a face at him. Setting down the empty wine glass, she hesitantly took the hand Oliver was now holding out to her. His palm was warm and large enough that it practically engulfed her own when his fingers closed around her hand.

"I'm a horrible dancer," Felicity offered quickly as an apology before Oliver could lead her onto the dance floor.

"I won't be winning any prizes myself," Oliver replied with a soft tug on her hand. Felicity reluctantly moved forward, her gaze resolutely fixed on the back of his head. She was determined not to acknowledge any of the heads that were now turning her way.

"You don't understand. The term 'two left feet' was created with me in mind. An elephant would look graceful by comparison should one happen to wander out onto this dance floor. My family has emergency protocols in place for when I get too close to a dance floor or anywhere where anyone might even think of dancing. Horrible doesn't even begin to cover what kind of dancer I am." Felicity bit down on the inside of her cheek to get herself to stop rambling, but her stomach was tying itself into knots and she wasn't entirely sure whether that had more to do with the fact that she was now standing on a dance floor with dozens of pairs of eyes fixed on her or with the fact that she was standing on a dance floor with Oliver Queen whose hand was settling itself at the middle of her back.

"How about you keep an eye out for that elephant, let me know if it ever shows up so I can switch partners, and I'll worry about making sure we don't endanger any lives in the meantime," Oliver suggested as he pulled her closer. She felt his breath ghost across the side of her face as he spoke.

Felicity allowed herself to relax against him after half a minute had passed without incident. She was discovering that he was an infinitely better dancer than he'd claimed if his ability to keep her upright and mobile was any indication. Then again, he had also limited them to a small two-step-wide circular space, so he was possibly just a very good strategist. Whatever the reason this hadn't turned disastrous, Felicity decided to relax and enjoy it while she could. That apparently meant slowly becoming all too aware all over again that she was dancing with Oliver Queen.

"Green is definitely your colour." He spoke into her ear, his voice low and steady.

Felicity's eyes widened and she looked up from wear she'd been memorising the thread pattern along the lapel of Oliver's suit. He was looking down at her and she couldn't avoid his gaze. His eyes were a brighter blue than she'd thought they'd be. Not that she'd spent any amount of time thinking about the shade of blue his eyes should be, but given his usually steely demeanour – and the fact that this was probably the closest she'd ever stood to him – she simply thought they'd be harder and darker to suit his usual persona. They weren't and it was kind of throwing her off.

"You know," Felicity cleared her throat. "If you're going to start hitting on me you might want to try a pick up line that can't also be mistaken for an insult."

Oliver blinked in surprise. "That wasn't – I didn't-" Oliver caught the hint of a teasing sparkle in her eye and the corners of his lips quivered. "I wasn't trying to hit on you," he said, the small smile belying his firm tone.

"Okay." Felicity shrugged, tearing her eyes away from the not entirely unappealing things that happened to his face when he smiled and focused on a spot across the room over his shoulder instead.

"Disappointed?" He asked a few moments later. His tone was…playful was the only word that came to Felicity's mind, but it was so foreign a concept to anything she'd ever seen from Oliver that she wanted to simply shrug it off as an effect of the wine she'd downed so quickly. And yet, the idea of a looser Oliver Queen was an intriguing one, so she decided to go with it.

"If I am, it's only because I've lost an opportunity to practice my verbal take downs," Felicity shot back lightly, eyes bright.

Oliver chuckled at that. Felicity felt the vibrations move through his chest in the hand she'd let slip from his shoulder to high up on his chest, her fingers tightening in response before she could stop them.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed, Felicity thought wryly as she relaxed her hand. She itched to move it back up to his shoulder, but he'd definitely notice that too. And if felt too much like a retreat, Felicity decided. She smoothed the fabric down instead and looked up to meet his eyes with a smile of her own.

Oliver shook his head at her, a small smile still playing across his lips. "Most people would just take the compliment."

"Sure," Felicity replied, cocking her head at him. "But most people think that cloud computing is run on actual clouds, so you're not really selling the point there."

Oliver inclined his head to acknowledge her win. "You've convinced me."

They continued dancing in a comfortable silence as the band skillfully eased from one song into the next. She wasn't entirely sure when his hand had slipped to the small of her back, but instead of becoming anxious or awkward, Felicity allowed herself to enjoy the solid feel of him holding her steady, his other hand securely clasping hers in a sure grip.

She was finding that he really was a better dancer than he'd initially advertised; having gotten her comfortable with the movements, he was now leading them in larger patterns across the floor. They weren't about to stun her coworkers with an impromptu routine, but it was certainly far more than Felicity had ever accomplished before and she found that she actually derived a little bit of pleasure from that.

"Enjoying yourself?" Oliver's breath tickled her ear. Felicity scrunched up her nose at the sensation - as though she were about to sneeze - before she could stop herself. She felt Oliver's low laugh vibrate throughout his chest and decided she didn't exactly dislike that feeling either.

"Yes, actually," Felicity responded sincerely. "I was also thinking," she continued dryly, "that it's probably some sort of Christmas miracle that you've prevented me from massacring everyone on our half of the dance floor."

"I refuse to believe you were ever that bad. No one is that bad."

"You should talk to Rhiannon." At Oliver's raised eyebrow, Felicity clarified, "The traitor you saw me with earlier. She'll take anyone with even the slightest ability to sway a hip out clubbing and even she refuses to be seen in public with me."

Oliver raised both eyebrows. "Traitor? I thought you were enjoying yourself."

"I am," Felicity assured him quickly. "But she had no way of knowing I would and every way of knowing that in all likelihood, you'd wind up in the hospital - thus traitor."

Oliver cocked his head to one side. "That makes perfect sense," he deadpanned.

Felicity pushed against his shoulder lightly and Oliver leaned back as if her tiny shove had actually accomplished something. Felicity couldn't help but smile at his attempt at a faux-pained expression.

The band eased into an instrumental rendition of 'Winter Wonderland' and Felicity's face brightened until it glowed. She looked up at Oliver with a sudden and wide smile on her face, practically vibrating with excitement.

"This is my favourite," she declared happily.

It figured she wouldn't get to enjoy it.

Only moments later, a small, brunette caught Felicity's eye from across the room. She was waiving shyly, but her brightly coloured Christmas-themed sweater helped her to stand out amongst the formal attire in the room. Felicity squinted at her friend, attempting to convey confusion from more than a dozen feet away. The tiny woman beckoned excitedly, her short choppy hair swinging against her face until she impatiently brushed it aside.

Felicity sighed, "I'm sorry, Oliver." She lifted her hand from his chest and he stilled mid step, a questioning look on his face.

"I have to go. This has been great," she rushed to say. "More than great actually considering…" Felicity trailed off and waved her hands as a reminder to their earlier conversation. "But I still have to, you know…" Felicity trailed off.

"Go?" Oliver guessed.

Felicity nodded. "Thanks for the dance, though." She smiled brilliantly up at him. "I'll be sure to let everyone know that someone survived a stint on a dance floor with me. They won't believe me," she added good-naturedly, "but I'll tell them anyway."

With a final, "Merry Christmas," Felicity stepped around him and rushed to the other side of the room leaving a bewildered Oliver behind her and standing alone in the middle of the crowded floor.

"Hmmm," Oliver made a thoughtful noise. "So that's what that's like."

* * *

_Feedback is always appreciated._


	4. Twelve Minutes

_This takes place over a year in the future (or at least a future that I've created in my head), so I'm imagining that Felicity knows Oliver's secret. I'm also thinking that something else may have started to develop by that time as well._

* * *

"Oliver, you're not listening to what I'm telling you."

Felicity watched with growing frustration as Oliver donned his leather uniform in terse silence. He was acting as though she weren't in the room and with every tense second that passed her desire to rip that hood off his head and strangle him with it grew exponentially.

"This is a trap," Felicity declared, eyes wide. "We're talking neon sign, flashing lights, hundred-dollar-bill-on-a-string level of trap here and you're just planning on walking right into it," she finished incredulously.

Oliver checked his arrows, but spared her a tight look. "I'm aware of the trap."

Felicity breathed a sigh of relief and released the death grip she'd maintained on the hem of her sweater. It was probably ruined. "Good." Frowning, she watched as Oliver slipped the quiver onto his back and picked up his bow. "So what's all this then?"

"I'm springing the trap."

All the tension that had seeped out of Felicity only moments ago returned ten-fold at Oliver's words. She fought the urge to yank the bow out of his hands. Oliver was being more infuriatingly stubborn than usual and while normally she would have waved it away and thrown a sarcastic comment or two his way to get him to understand, she realised that this was different. Unfortunately, it was the kind of different that had the potential to get him seriously injured or killed.

She told him as much.

His only response was a long, slow breath. She watched him pull on his bow string, gauging the tension, satisfied with whatever he felt there before lowering it and turning to face her.

"I can't let him do this." His voice was as steady as always, but his eyes were dark and troubled and could barely hold her gaze. "It's my fault."

"He's a grown man capable of making his own decisions, Oliver. You're not responsible for that," she told him softly. Wrapping her arms tightly against her stomach, Felicity took a step towards him as carefully as one might approach a frightened animal. She didn't really think anything she could say would dissuade from his current mindset, but she knew she had to try.

Oliver shook his head. "Not responsible. At fault."

"Not at fault either." She stood a foot away from him and figured that was close enough. She'd learned long ago that caging in Oliver Queen wasn't the ticket to calming him down; it had the ability to do the exact opposite and right now she needed to talk him away from the metaphorical ledge not push him towards it.

Oliver's eyes snapped to meet hers. There was anger now just below that troubled, boiling surface – anger that he kept in check through what she knew to be strength of will alone. His voice was low and coarse when he spoke, "How can you say that?"

"Because it's the truth." Shoulder's lifting in a heavy sigh, Felicity's hands curled into her sides. This wasn't the first time they'd had one variation or another of this conversation. She knew where he would take this next.

"I killed his father."

"He's not dead."

"No," Oliver snapped. "He's in a coma the doctors say he has almost a zero chance of waking up from. That's much better."

"Are you forgetting the part where his father tried to kill you?" Felicity exclaimed. "Repeatedly and violently and on more than one occasion he got pretty damn close. I'll bet that he never sat around afterwards trying to make peace with his guilty conscience."

"Doesn't matter," Oliver said.

Felicity's eyes widened. She opened her mouth to respond but Oliver spoke first.

"Doesn't matter," Oliver repeated firmly. "This is between me and Tommy now. What his father's done – it doesn't matter anymore. I can't let Tommy make the same mistakes."

There was a terrible ache growing behind her eyes and all Felicity wanted to do was collapse back into her chair and finish the diagnostics she'd been running before Oliver had come storming in demanding she start accessing the harbour's security systems.

"Oliver," Felicity began, voice soft and eyes sad. "I get it. I do. I really, really do. And if I weren't so absolutely, positively sure that the only reason we found out about this meeting was because they wanted to use it as a trap for the Hood then I'd be handing you that bow and all but throwing you out of this place to go kick their sorry asses." Felicity paused "If I could throw you anywhere that is."

There was a flicker of amusement on Oliver's face and Felicity pressed on, her tone growing more earnest with every word. "But I do know it's a trap because I am very good at what you've asked me to do for you. I know that they've mobilised a veritable militia on the ground ready to shoot a mouse at the slightest squeak. I know they've got their men in the precincts creating a dead zone around the meeting point." She couldn't keep still anymore as the information she'd frantically rushed to gather over the past few hours came bubbling out of her in a well of fear and frustration.

She began pacing in front of him as she spoke, her hands flying out to punctuate her words. "There's chatter coming in that they're moving homeless people from the Glades into the harbour that suggests they're not above collateral damage, but I can't be sure because there's no time to run the recon." Her glasses were falling down her nose as she moved and she pushed them back up with the back of one hand. "There's been increased activity and movement in the shipping yards, so who knows what they're bringing in because – again – I can't be sure without doing the proper recon." Felicity stopped mid pace, a couple of steps off to the side of where Oliver remained standing, his body absolutely still save for the way his head had followed her back and forth.

Felicity moved towards him until she stood much closer than she'd dared earlier. They'd been working together like this for over a year, but she still couldn't say that being in close proximity to him was something she was yet comfortable with. There was a near constant tension that radiated off of him that set her on edge. Even knowing where some of it stemmed from did little to ease the pinpricks that raced up and down her spine whenever he moved too close which, fortunately enough for her, wasn't altogether too often. It seemed Oliver Queen was a firm believer in personal space and for that she was grateful.

Forcing all that aside, Felicity stepped into his space and tilted her head back to look up at him. She hoped the panic twisting her stomach into knots that were making it hard to suck in a full breath was also all over her face.

"Diggle's not even here to back you up," she added softly, almost pleadingly. "You'd be going in alone and you'd be going in blind."

Oliver was quiet for several moments, his knuckles going white as his grip on his bow tightened in frustration. Felicity held her breath as she watched a war wage itself across his face. She didn't dare to hope that she'd actually gotten through to him. Not even when his eyes slid shut and his mouth tightened in a grim line.

"I wouldn't be blind," Oliver offered. His eyes flickered open to meet hers and he tried a tight smile. "I've got you. You're very good at what I've asked you to do."

Felicity actually smiled a little at that – a smile that she tamped down on almost as quickly as it appeared on her face lest he get the impression that he'd converted her to his crazy plan. "I am good. That's why I can tell you how impossible it would be for you to come out of this with all your limbs still intact." She tilted her head to one side. "Sometimes it seems like you're trying your hardest to separate yourself from them, but I thought maybe I'd help you keep them attached to your body for just a little while longer," she added lightly before growing serious again. "It'd be my fault, you know?"

Oliver frowned down at her, confusion replacing the resignation on his face.

"If something happened to your limbs," Felicity explained, "or to the rest of you even," she amended quickly, "while I was supposed to be your eyes in there. It'd be my fault."

Oliver shook his head at her. "Someone once told me that grown men are capable of making their own choices." She felt his fingertips touch her wrist lightly where it hung at her side. "And that they happen to be responsible for them too."

"Yeah, well." Her neck was protesting being tilted back for so long so she allowed her head to fall forward in relief, her gaze catching on where his free hand remained on her wrist. She swallowed. "It seems we've both got some work to do on that front."

Suddenly Oliver's hand was gone and he was moving away from her in long strides. Felicity absentmindedly rubbed at her wrist as she watched him toss his bow onto the stainless steel table holding most of his other equipment. She winced at the sharp clang and knew he'd regret doing that later.

"I can't just sit here and do nothing." Oliver clenched the edge of the table in a bid to stop himself from throwing anything else in anger. His body was bent over the table, muscles tense and hardened with fury. "He's been my best friend for years; whatever's happening between us now, that still means something."

Staring at his back, Felicity's mind worked furiously, racing through possibilities and alternate scenarios.

"Tommy's the only one you really need to get to, right?" Felicity turned on the spot, not waiting for Oliver to respond. "I mean, he's the keystone here." She practically ran back to her computer and threw herself into her chair, hands reaching for the keyboard before she'd even sat down.

"It's a save-the-cheerleader-save-the-world sort of scenario." Felicity paused and frowned at the reflection of Oliver walking towards her on her screen. "Were you around when that was a thing?" She resumed typing, her gaze focusing back on the characters on her monitor. "Doesn't matter."

"What are you getting at?" Oliver leaned over her shoulder and tried to make sense of the windows that were popping up in rapid succession and the characters flooding one half of the screen.

"You don't need to get to the meeting," Felicity said. "You just need to get to Tommy."

Oliver glanced at the digital clock in the bottom corner of her screen. "He should already be on his way there."

"I know," Felicity muttered, hands flying over the keyboard. Biting her lip, she squinted at one window in particular and scowled when her repeated attempts to gain access didn't produce the desired result. "But being on his way to the meeting means that he's not already there which means-" Felicity let out a triumphant noise midsentence as another window popped open. She spun in her chair with glee, forcing Oliver to take a step back to narrowly avoid being whipped across the face by her long ponytail.

"Which means," Oliver prompted.

Eyes wide and bright, Felicity gazed up at him with a satisfied smirk on her face. "Which means I just bought you twelve minutes to get to tenth and Main." At Oliver's raised eyebrow, she clarified, "Security cameras have him leaving his condo approximately ten minutes ago and with some clever manipulation of the traffic light system, I'll have him in the area of tenth and Main about twelve minutes from now."

"Twelve minutes?"

Felicity smile waned. "It's the best I can do."

Oliver grinned. It was a sudden flash of a smile across his face that took Felicity by surprise. "It's perfect. I can work with twelve minutes."

He moved quickly to gather his gear and Felicity turned back to her computer to ensure that everything was still functioning (or not functioning as it was in some cases) the way she needed it to. Satisfied that everything checked out, she focused her attention on Oliver's reflection in her monitor's screen. He was securing his bow when she called his name and his head jerked towards her, their eyes meeting.

"Do you think he'll listen to you?" Oliver's reflection stiffened and she suddenly wanted to take the question back.

"He'll listen to the Hood," Oliver replied darkly. "It's Oliver Queen he hates."

Felicity nodded as she mentally chastised herself for bringing it up. "Eleven minutes," she told him.

Oliver held her gaze a moment longer before he turned away and was gone.

* * *

_Feedback is never not appreciated._


	5. To Yield With a Grace to Reason

_**A/N:** This may be the last drabble for a bit. I've got an inkling for a longer fic, so I'll be working on that as well (you know, in addition to uni and life). If something episodic inspires me, I may have to bang out another drabble or one shot, but I'm not making promises._

* * *

_When Oliver needs her help, Felicity tries to decline for what she considers to be some very good reasons._ _ Oliver doesn't agree._

* * *

"No."

"Felicity," Oliver closed his eyes wearily as he spoke, "I can't reach it. If I could, don't you think I'd do it myself?"

Felicity shuddered. "That's not an image I needed to have in my head, thanks."

"Felicity."

"Oliver," Felicity sighed and eyed the forceps Oliver was holding out to her as though he were handing her a live grenade. "The closest I've come to a suture is Thanksgiving turkey, so you can't be serious."

"Do I sound like I'm joking?"

He didn't, Felicity had to admit. He sounded exhausted.

"I'll walk you through it," Oliver promised when she didn't move.

Felicity clasped her hands tightly against her stomach. "That's not nearly as comforting as you seem to think it is."

She turned to walk to the other side of the room. She stopped Oliver's inevitable question by raising her hands and waving them in the air.

"Relax. I'm washing my hands," she said. "The last thing we need is for you to pull an Alexander the Great." Thinking that she just hadn't heard Oliver's reply over the sound of the running water, Felicity glanced back over her shoulder only to find him staring blankly at her with a single raised eyebrow.

"Seriously?" Felicity rolled her eyes as she turned the water off and grabbed a towel to dry her hands. She continued talking as she walked over to him; more to calm the nerves threatening to burn a hole through her stomach than out of any real indignation at Oliver's obvious indifference to anything that could have been learnt by reading a book. "Did you also not happen to learn any world history at any of the four schools you dropped out of either?"

"I know who Alexander the Great was," Oliver tossed back as he watched her pull on a pair of latex gloves. She accepted the forceps and suturing needle from him, but the look on her face assured him that she'd probably rather be holding a poisonous snake.

"Then you know that he conquered most of the known world at the time and even he ended up dying from something really stupid like malaria or a bacterial infection," Felicity replied. She met his firm stare with worried eyes. She had the maddening urge to fidget, to step from side to side in an attempt to calm the nerves in her stomach, but she held herself still. "I've never done this before, Oliver. What if something goes wrong?" Her eyes widened. "What if I kill you?"

"Felicity," Oliver said firmly. "You're sewing my skin back together not performing open heart surgery."

"You're not going to let me talk myself out of this, are you?"

"No."

With a groan, Felicity stepped around Oliver to take a look at the gash just over his right shoulder. It was four inches long, its edges jagged and torn and deep enough that she couldn't in good conscience continue to refuse to stitch it up for him. With her stomach threatening to rebel against the sight, Felicity squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to take a long and deep calming breath.

"It's not like you haven't done something like this before," Oliver remarked gently. With her behind him, he could only hear her controlled breathing. She was standing close enough to him that he could feel her long exhalations blowing against the back of his neck.

"You were dying," she replied between breaths.

"So this should be less stressful."

"The adrenaline helped. It was probably the only thing keeping me on my feet."

"I don't think that's true, but I'll remember to ask for a more fatal wound next time," Oliver remarked dryly.

Felicity took one last breath and opened her eyes. The wound was still there, an angry tear in his skin. Squinting, she inspected it more closely to make sure she wasn't going to be closing it up with any debris left inside. Oliver had said he'd cleaned it, but it wasn't exactly in an easy to reach spot.

"This doesn't look like a knife wound," Felicity murmured quietly.

"I never said it was a knife wound," Oliver replied. He felt her fingers prodding gently along the edges, allowed himself a small wince at the sting, and readied himself for the needle to pierce his skin. "You're going to hold the needle point down and then move along the curve through the skin. Release the needle and pick it up on the other side to pull it and the thread out, leaving a tail for the knot. Then you do the same to the other side until the edges pull together. Knot it off at the end, cut the thread, and move on to the next one." Oliver glanced back at Felicity and caught her gaze. She looked calmer. He nodded back to her, "Easy."

"Right," Felicity chuckled nervously at that. "Easy."

"Don't worry about how it's going to look."

"You wouldn't be saying that if you'd seen my Thanksgiving turkey."

Oliver raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

Felicity cast him an apologetic look. "Meaning there was never any chance that it's going to look pretty."

Oliver felt her fingers still against skin and heard her quickly suck in a breath. Seconds later he felt the prick of a needle and closed his eyes against the gritty slide of the thread through the torn edges of his skin. He blew out a breath at the same time as he felt Felicity's against his neck and shoulder. He felt the second prick and the second slide and breathed again through the uncomfortable tug as the torn edges of the gash were slowly pulled back together.

They spent the next several minutes in silence as Felicity knotted the first suture and began each next one. The only sounds passing between them were the soft and steady rhythms of their breathing and the louder rumblings of the water moving through the old pipes of the abandoned warehouse. Oliver's breathing had adjusted to match the prick and pull of Felicity's sutures, both of them exhaling slowly with every long slide of the thread as Felicity closed off another stitch.

Felicity took to the task with a narrow and single minded focus. If she were completely honest with herself, it really wasn't altogether too different from the way she became completely absorbed by her work with computers – only with more blood and a greater need to suppress her gag reflex.

While she wasn't expecting to win any awards for her abilities, she was at least trying not to make Oliver's wound any worse and to do that she had to ignore everything else around her. She drove out the sounds of the warehouse in the background until they all blended together to form a perpetual hum of white noise. She fought the urge to wipe away the sweat beading up on her forehead and pushed away the itchy sensation of it dampening the material of her shirt between her shoulder blades. She noted with some interest the way Oliver's muscles tensed almost imperceptibly with the anticipation of each next stitch until she pushed that away as well and focused entirely on the steady up-down and rolling motions of the needle and thread.

On the seventh suture, Felicity's voice broke through the quiet, "So how did you get this then?"

Oliver frowned at the wall across from him. "The cut?"

Felicity rolled her eyes at the back of his head. "Only you would call this a cut."

"It's essentially a cut."

"No," Felicity replied slowly. "A cut is what I get when I come into close contact with a sheet of paper."

"Then just imagine that this was a very large sheet of paper."

"The edges are jagged," Felicity retorted.

"A serrated knife then."

"We've already established it wasn't." Felicity finished the stitch and started on what she thought would probably be the final one. "You do know that I can always access the security feeds."

Oliver sighed heavily, his head falling forward as he did. Felicity thought she heard him mutter something, but couldn't be sure. When he lifted his head again, Felicity was still waiting for a response.

"I got caught on a fence."

Felicity's hands stilled mid-stitch. Silence rose up between them again. Oliver stared at the wall in confusion. He was about to look over his shoulder when Felicity resumed her stitching.

"You know I was only joking about Alexander the Great," came her reply a moment later.

A small smile tugged at the corners of Oliver's lips and he had to bite back a laugh. Shaking his head at her he replied, "I have no intention of dying from tetanus, don't worry."

"No one ever intends to die from a bacterial infection," Felicity pointed out. She caught her tongue between her teeth as she focused on tying off the last suture. Snipping the ends of the thread short, she blew out a long breath and took a step back to critique her handiwork. She cringed.

"There's an upside to this," Felicity tried to reassure him as she reached over his shoulder to grab the large piece of gauze he was holding up to her. "It probably won't be the worst looking scar you've got."

Felicity finished taping down the bandage then stopped for a moment and thought about what she'd said.

"That's not what I meant," she added quickly. Wincing, she felt compelled to clarify, "Actually it is what I meant – sort of. But it probably sounds worse than how I'd meant it and I'm pretty sure I've just inadvertently offended myself more than I've offended you given the fact that you got those scars on a deserted island completely devoid of the miracles of modern medicine."

Felicity felt Oliver's laugh in the hand she'd left resting against his bare back. The sound was foreign enough that she couldn't quite stop a surprised expression from spreading across her face.

"Don't worry about it, Felicity," Oliver said gratefully. He rose slowly and turned to face her. He found her regarding him with raised eyebrows and he responded with a questioning tilt of his head.

Felicity smiled sheepishly, shaking her head and laughing quietly at herself as she carefully peeled off her latex gloves. Stepping around him, she walked back over to the sink to clean herself up and caught her reflection in the simple square mirror that hung on the wall over the sink. Short strands of hair stuck to her forehead, sticky with perspiration. Her cheeks were flushed and she was pretty sure she'd radiated enough heat to make the hair on the top of her head go frizzy from humidity. Heaving a sigh, she stopped herself before she could stick her tongue out at her reflection in exasperation. She was in desperate need of a shower, but right now she'd have to make do with splashing some water on her face.

Oliver moved in the reflection behind her and her eyes snapped over to him instead as she scrubbed at her hands. She watched him slowly roll his injured shoulder back and forth as he walked to grab a clean shirt. Pain flickered across his face as he gingerly pulled on his shirt. She thought the saw a grimace for a fraction of a second before he schooled his face back into the neutral and guarded expression he usually wore.

Shaking her head at his reflection, Felicity spun around quickly when a series of short beeps from her computer alerted her to a new presence in the warehouse.

"So the drop's been made," announced Diggle only a few seconds later. Walking in, he dropped an empty black duffle bag near the equipment area. Shedding his jacket, he walked over to the rows of racks of equipment and picked up what looked like a stick. It probably had a name and Oliver would probably be offended if she called it a stick to his face, but she hadn't bothered to learn all the names of the dozens of various types of weapons he and Diggle had collected.

"We've got at least a few hours, if not more, to kill before the target picks it up," Diggle continued as he slowly started making patterns in the air with the practice weapon he held in one hand. He waved it towards Oliver and with a teasing grin he asked, "How's your shoulder?"

Oliver crossed his arms across his chest, his face remaining passive. "I'll live."

Diggle's grin broadened. "I didn't doubt that for one second."

Oliver cocked his head to one side thoughtfully and turned slowly to face Felicity where she still stood by the sink slowly wiping her hands dry with a towel. Felicity's eyes widened when she saw the expression on Oliver's face. She wouldn't go so far as to call it mischievous, but she didn't think she'd be overshooting the mark if she considered it to be at least some sort of watered down version of that – an Oliver Queen style of mischievousness that remained mostly hidden behind the stony set of his features. The only real hint of it was in the faintest twinkle in his blue eyes.

It was not an entirely unattractive look for him and for the first time Felicity was glad her face was still flushed from earlier as it hid the blush she felt creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. Her stomach flipped over and she clutched the towel a little tighter.

"Felicity did however," Oliver declared.

Her eyes widened further. She'd intended to glare at him, but Diggle had stopped whatever it was he'd been doing with that stick to stare at her with an amused expression and the full force of both their stares was enough to fluster her.

"What," was all she could squeak out. She cleared her throat and tried again. "What?" she asked again, her voice stronger. Her eyes flickered between the two men before settling on Oliver. He hadn't moved, but his eyes had brightened further and she had to forcefully ignore the response it triggered in her already somersaulting stomach.

"You thought I'd go the way of Alexander the Great."

"Wait a second -" she started.

"Alexander the Great?" Diggle asked incredulously. "I think you and I need to sit down and have a talk about the things we do not do. Number one being saying things that inflate Oliver Queen's here ego."

Hearing Diggle's playful tone, Felicity felt herself relax. She made a face at both of them, smiling lightly as she tossed the towel onto the counter behind her and walked to join them at the edge of Oliver's training area. She tried to ignore the way Oliver's eyes followed her. "I wasn't going for flattery."

"It's true," Oliver agreed. "She was teaching me a very important lesson."

"Don't pick a fight with a fence when an armed gunman will do?" Diggle offered.

Oliver shifted his stare to Diggle. "You think you're hilarious," Oliver observed dryly.

"I have been told something to that effect on occasion."

Oliver narrowed his eyes slightly before pulling his head slightly back to regard Diggle with a more intense stare. "You're happier than you were when I left you."

"One might say those two things were connected," Felicity murmured under her breath. When both men turned their head towards her - Diggle with a quietly bemused expression and Oliver with a raised eyebrow – Felicity realised that they'd heard her and rushed to clarify.

"Not that I would say that," she amended, her hands gesturing wildly. "I mean, I did say that," she emphasised, hoping that they understood she was referring to her statement. "But I wouldn't be the one to say that the two things were at all connected. Why would they be? They wouldn't. At all."

"They may have been slightly connected," Diggle allowed.

Oliver's narrow-eyed stare turned into a glare, but there was no real menace behind it. Felicity allowed the smile that had been creeping along the edges of her mouth to take shape on her face and she laughed.

Diggle took a step back and turned towards Felicity. He started making those patterns again with the practice weapon and Felicity looked at him with a questioning expression.

"While Mr. Queen here takes some time to heal from his debilitating wound, what do you say to a little self-defense class, Ms. Smoak?"

He was joking, of this Felicity was sure. It must have been written all over her face because Diggle stopped his movements and regarded her honestly.

"I promise we'll start slow."

"That's not necessary," Felicity practically stammered. "Really not necessary."

She felt rather than saw Oliver move closer to her, his elbow nudging her in the side lightly. He spoke near enough to her ear that she could feel his breath fanning across the side of her face. "Unfortunately, one day it might become all too necessary." His tone was serious and Felicity swallowed the protest she'd prepared. He wasn't wrong.

His tone was lighter the next time he spoke and he managed to catch her by surprise with another light nudge against her side. This time it succeeded in drawing her gaze up to his face. His eyes were doing that not unattractive thing where they weren't steely or hard, but actually softening and it was throwing her off.

"I'll even let you try a little archery. Who knows? Maybe we'll even make it your thing."

"What?" Was Felicity's strangled response.

That was a word that Felicity felt she'd been using all too often that night, but between Diggle's outstretched hand and expectant expression and Oliver's failed attempts to hide a growing smile, Felicity felt like she'd stepped into an alternate universe where Oliver Queen had a sense of humour.

So despite another word's shoddy track record in keeping one Felicity Smoak far removed from things she decidedly would rather not be doing – given how this evening had begun – she tried it again, this time dragging it out for effect.

"Noooooo."

* * *

_Feedback = good._


	6. Now I am Under

_This was written based on a conversation I'd had with **hopedreamlovepray** about silences and moments and unnecessary words and I basically wrote this in a few hours when I should have been studying for my exams, but here it is anyway and you guys don't care about this random info stuff. So just have this. _

_It's barely edited because...again...exams...and it's way more rambly (yes, that's a word) than I usually write, but whatevs._

* * *

Her hands shook.

Her hands had started to tremble when she'd heard the first cries sounding weakly over her ear piece. Oliver's sharp curse had startled her and she'd realised that she'd frozen up in front of her screens. Her fingers had clattered against the keys until she'd managed to steady them long enough to access the security feeds and city cameras from the address Oliver had tossed to her before running out of the Foundry bow in hand and hood in place.

The fire had almost completely consumed the ancient building by the time Oliver had reached the old, rundown corner of the Glades. The crumbling walls and splintered floors had lit up like so much tinder in the dry heat of summer in Starling City. Maybe it had been the surely faulty wiring that had provided the spark or maybe it had been something more deliberate, but the why hadn't mattered so much as Felicity had watched flames lick up the sides of the building and through every blown out window as it devoured its way to the top, determined to turn the dried up husk of a building to nothing more than ash and heat-warped steel bones.

The cries had gotten louder then as she'd watched Oliver circle the crowd that had gathered to watch the building burn. Some of them had been the residents forced out by the fire - too poor to care about the leaking ceilings, the rats, or the fact that most of the window panes hadn't been glass, but cardboard and duct tape. Theirs were the cries she could hear over the ear piece and reverberating into her head – theirs were the cries of those poor enough to have called that building home, now forced to watch their lives go up in hot flames and billowing smoke.

Oliver had stayed hidden on the outskirts of the growing crowd, watching and waiting, but for what she hadn't known. She'd squinted at the screen, nearly pressed her face right up against the heat of it trying to see what he was seeing.

She'd seen it maybe a split second before he had, but the words had caught in her throat when the shadowed figure had appeared briefly in one of the topmost windows of the dying building. She'd forgotten how to breathe when Oliver's head had snapped towards that brief flicker of movement. For one impossibly long second, he hadn't moved and she hadn't dared to speak. She'd wanted to scream reprisals into his ear, to convince him of the futility of what he was planning on doing, of the danger, and the terrifying possibility that once those flames finished consuming the tired bones of the building, they'd find him and consume him too.

She hadn't said anything, but she'd watched Oliver disappear into the building next door and suddenly the cries and screams of heart-wrenching pain were gone only to be replaced by the sound of Oliver's steady breathing as he ran up flights of stairs. She'd forced herself to focus on the long and slow pulls of air, the increasingly heavy breaths he would take the longer he ran up and up and up. She'd let those familiar sounds echo through her skull as her hands flew across the keyboard in a desperate attempt to make the city's fire department and police respond faster to a call she was sure had already been passed over.

She'd helplessly watched as the fire devoured another floor on its way to the top and she'd wondered then if maybe they both hadn't imagined the figure in the window. Maybe it had been the wildly flickering flames playing tricks on them to beckon more fuel into its burning depths, but in the same instant she'd been preparing to voice that improbable possibility to Oliver, another window had blown out on the top floor and a hand had reached out of the smoke and into the warm night air. Then a head, and though Felicity's city camera feeds were silent, she'd known that there must have been cries for help.

She hadn't spoken a word, had barely had enough time to suck in a breath with her heart in her throat, but maybe she'd gasped or possibly even screamed a little at the sight of person in the midst of the smoke and the flames because Oliver's breathing had sped up and she would swear that she could've heard him move faster.

He'd exploded onto the roof after blowing the door off its hinges. All the buildings in the Glades had been crammed as close together as possible in order to fit as many of the city's unwanted into the smallest space possible. Oliver had made larger leaps before, but that hadn't stopped Felicity's stomach from lurching when he'd been airborne and then crash back down again when she'd heard him roll onto the roof of the burning building.

It had been then that Felicity had heard the fire for the first time. A consistent crackling hum underscored every snap of old wood and every pop of release as the decrepit old building gave way to the new energy that poured itself into every crevice and crack, claiming them and consuming them in the same instant.

Oliver's strained grunts had forced the fire into the background as he struggled to open the rooftop door. Warped by the heat of the fire, the door had resisted Oliver's considerable strength and Felicity had felt a sliver of hope needle its way into her brain; maybe he wouldn't be able to open it, maybe he wouldn't be able to find a way into the inferno that blazed beneath his feat.

But she'd heard the door straining against its hinges and Oliver's explosive exhale as it suddenly gave way and he'd been forced to stumble backwards. The moment he'd entered the building she'd known, not because she could see him, but because his coughs had been loud and sharp in her ear. They had echoed throughout her head, had bounced off the walls of her skull, and making her heart catch in fear on every other beat. She'd thought that nothing could get any louder than his painful, hacking coughs as acrid smoke filled his lungs until the collapsing roof on her camera feed crashed agonizingly into her eardrum.

With her ear ringing, she would have ripped out the ear piece right then, but she'd been too busy screaming Oliver's name at that point. Desperation laced with the frustration of being unable to do anything coloured her words as she'd shouted at him to get out of building. She'd watched in horror as the fire suddenly began burning as though it were on fast-forward. The fire engulfed every floor, poured out of every window, and there were no more hands or heads or cries for help only hot yellow flames. She'd been sure at that point that no one could have survived and she hadn't known anymore what she'd been shouting to Oliver as she'd listened to him cough and heave, but at one point he had cried out as he'd struggled to lift a burning beam off of a burning boy. She'd only stopped, her voice hoarse, when she'd seen him leap out of a top story window, flames licking at his back and a small body tucked against his side.

She'd collapsed into her chair then. She hadn't even realised that she'd been standing. She'd watched in silence as fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances converged around the raging inferno that lit the night like a beacon. They'd arrived too late, of course.

Oliver had rushed the small boy to an ambulance, leaving before attracting too much attention, not seeing what would become of the only person he'd managed to pull out of the blaze before it had consumed everything in its path.

* * *

Her hands shook.

They shook as they carefully washed away the soot and ash from the burned skin of Oliver's hands. They shook as they gently spread a thin layer of anti-burn ointment onto the red and blistered skin, and they shook as she poured a thick amount of a mash of Oliver's herbs over top. They shook as she slowly wrapped it all up until the burns were hidden away behind swaths of clean white gauze.

With his hands burnt and damaged as they were, he'd only been able to stand under a shower and let the water wash away what it could, so now Felicity's hands shook as she wiped the grease from around his eyes and the streaks of it off his cheeks and jaw. His eyes remained fixed on a point just above her right shoulder which was just as well, she figured, because she'd caught a glimpse of his eyes when he'd stumbled back into the Foundry earlier and she'd seen too much in them. She'd seen more than the cameras had shown her and more than the earpiece had allowed her to hear and she thought that maybe it was more than she wanted to know.

He sat silently on the cold steel table as her hands did what his couldn't and when he closed his eyes to allow her to wipe the grease from his eyelids, Felicity hated herself for the small upwelling of relief she felt at not having to worry that she'd accidently catch another glimpse of the horror he'd witnessed.

Oliver tiredly opened his eyes when she was done, as though that small movement was costing him what little energy he had left. He wasn't looking over her shoulder anymore, but right at her and Felicity couldn't avoid him or it or anything any longer. There was an emptiness, a hollowness, in him that wasn't empty or hollow at all (she wasn't sure how that was supposed to work, but there it was in front of her), but it was pain and anger and sadness and desperation and all the things that could bore into a person and tear them apart from the inside out until there was nothing left but bloodied shreds of self.

Her hands shook as she caught a bead of grease-darkened water before it could roll off of his jaw and maybe he'd unconsciously moved to do it himself, forgetting about his wrapped hand, or maybe he'd been aiming for her hand all along, but somehow the damp towel she'd been holding had fallen into his lap and his hand had replaced it.

Fingers tightening around his before she could stop them, she was sure her grip was hurting him, but when she tried to loosen it he only held on tighter himself. He rested his chin against their joined hands, eyes never leaving hers. Felicity wondered what he was seeing and whether or not he could see the words she couldn't quite get to form around her tongue.

She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to say how much more than just sorry she was. How sorry wasn't enough of a word to explain how badly she'd wanted him to come rushing back out of that building with every person who'd been trapped inside by the unbearable flames and the suffocating smoke. How she'd wanted that almost as much for _him_ as she had for _them_ because she knew that the lives he'd taken still haunted him sometimes; in those nights when she'd find him working out in the Foundry or in those moments when he'd go still and his mind would drift off and he'd come back somber and quiet. She knew that somewhere along the way it had stopped just being about taking the bad people out and had started being about saving the good ones. She wanted to say all that, but the words refused to form up in the right order in her head and she couldn't quite wrap her tongue around the ones that managed to wrest themselves free from the confusion and chaos of her mind.

So her hands shook instead and he held one of them in one of his as he looked at her like he knew it all, like he knew too much, like he knew more than she could even think of saying. She wanted to make it stop, was afraid he could feel the tremors in her knees too, but the longer he held on and the longer she held his gaze, the more she saw of him and this time it didn't scare her or make her want to turn away.

He was struggling to put those torn shreds back together again, to fit them back into the closest approximation of their original place as he could. She didn't know if she could help him, didn't know where to start even if she could, but she was slowly starting to realise that maybe this – her hands and him, her fear and his – was enough to start stitching some of those tears back into some sort of whole. He would still be broken, but he wouldn't be alone.

Oliver's hands shook and Felicity held on.

* * *

_Feedback...you know the drill..._


	7. Chapter 7

_I'm going to go ahead and post a few short things I wrote in response to some prompts I received on Tumblr in the past couple of weeks. They're short and completely separate from anything, but they helped me get back into the groove of writing, so here they are._

_This one was in response to the prompt: "their first hug"_

* * *

It doesn't happen like she's imagined it would. And, yeah, she's imagined it a time to two. Truth be told, she's imagined a whole lot more than a hug between them. So when it finally happens and it's not like she expected, she doesn't have time to analyse every minute detail of the experience afterwards because she's kind of running for her life and there are guns going off and bullets flying all around them and Diggle's right by her side all of a sudden, pulling her away from him, she just doesn't have the time to be disappointed.

But later when she's catching her breath and wrapping a ragged cloth around the gash in Diggle's upper arm as Oliver quietly watches the darkened tree line for any renewed sign of attack, Felicity takes the opportunity to remember the surprised look on his face as she'd run towards him. The fear that had swept across his features when she'd disregarded the men yelling at her to stay away from him, the way his eyes had swept around the room to take in the guns being raised, and how he'd opened his mouth to yell at her to stop before she'd silenced him by all but crashing into him. Her arms had slipped around his waist in a second, one hand clenching the back of his shirt in a tight grip, holding him to her, while the other quickly yet carefully pulled a stiletto from her sleeve and just as carefully pushed it under the waistband of his jeans. She'd felt his muscles tense as the cold metal slid against the bare skin of his back and she'd turned her head to mutter an apology into the hard wall of his chest.

He'd lowered his head at that same moment and he'd pressed his lips into the soft hair at her temple. If she focuses on that moment hard enough, she swears she can still feel his mouth against the tip of her ear and the way his breath fanned across her cheek as he'd taken a moment to just breathe before hoarsely whispering instructions into her ear. Seconds later, she'd felt hands grab at her from behind and yank her away from Oliver, but not before he'd brought his hands to her hips, fingertips pressing bruises into her skin to hold her in place and to keep her away from the men who'd already made their intentions for her very clear.

She fights the urge to lift up her shirt and check to make sure that it all had actually happened, but there's Diggle's blood on her hands, the muscles in her legs ache from the running, and her throat and lungs burn from the cold air. She doesn't think she's imagined anything that's happened that night.

She looks up at Oliver, though, as she finishes with Diggle's bandage and after she manages to push him back down against the broken wall to force him to rest. The fact that she can says more about Diggle's injured state than her adrenaline-fueled strength and when she meets Oliver's eyes it's to silently tell him that they might be down one member of their team for the ensuing escape attempt. She watches him take in the sight of Diggle slumped against the wall, eyes closed, breathing laboured, before he runs his gaze over what he can make out of her crouched form.

She stands up, partly because she needs him to stop looking at her like that and partly because she wants to reassure him that she's fine. His eyes fasten on to hers and she has to consciously remind herself that now is not the time to do some more _imagining_. She shakes her head as she closes the gap between them, takes a little bit of perverse joy in the way his eyes widen just a fraction (she only notices because there's maybe only a hands breadth of space between them now) as she reaches an arm around him to grasp the now-bloodied stiletto he'd tucked back into the waistband of his jeans.

She feels rather than hears his hiss in the sharp puff of air it blows against her face as the metal slides against his skin and she really shouldn't be taking pleasure in the way he sways towards her, but she does.

"I'll be needing that again," she whispers the words because she doesn't know how close their captors are from finding them and because she's fascinated by the way his pupils dilate when she does it. This situation they've found themselves in is absolutely crazy, she can't help but think, and if they manage to get out of it alive, she's figures the one good thing to come of it is a whole lot of late-night fodder to keep her imagination going.

The way Oliver's looking at her, though, she doesn't think she'll need her imagination for that much longer.


	8. Chapter 8

_The prompt was: "At the airport."_

* * *

"I'm going to be late."

"I've already apologized. Multiple times, in fact. Would you like me to apologise again?"

"Will it get me to the airport faster?"

"Doubtful."

Felicity slouched down into the passenger seat and groaned. "My mother is going to kill me. She hates waiting at the airport."

Oliver flexed his hand on the shifter, releasing the clutch and accelerating into sixth gear as he sped far too quickly off the on ramp and onto the highway. He snuck a glance at Felicity out of the corner of his eye (she was usually ready with statistics about what high speeds did to metal and human flesh) and found her too busy worrying her thumb between her teeth to remark on his driving.

Reaching out, Oliver pulled her hand away from her mouth (he would only hear about her chipped nail polish afterwards if he let her continue), debated what to do with it for one panic-inducing second before the decision was made for him as he was forced to gear down at the sight of a long line of brake lights. He let it drop back into her lap.

Felicity groaned again as Oliver slowed the car to practically a crawl, her head falling back against the head rest with a soft thump. "Why is this happening?"

"Traffic?"

"Everything! All of it!" Felicity exclaimed. "My mother, the mission going wrong-"

"It didn't go-" Oliver tried to interject, but Felicity went on as though she hadn't heard him.

"My car breaking down exactly when I didn't need it to, traffic, my life." Felicity closed her eyes with a heavy sigh and Oliver was thankful she couldn't see the small grin he was doing a rather poor job of hiding.

"And to make it worse," Felicity continued wearily, "you're here."

Oliver waited. Two seconds later, Felicity's head snapped away from the head rest. "That's not what I meant to say at all."

"I know."

"It's just," Felicity paused and frowned in thought as she cocked her head and squinted at the side of his face, "I don't know how to explain you to my mother."

Shifting back into a higher gear as the cars around them began to speed up, Oliver spared her a glance before focusing on the line of cars ahead of them. He tried to keep his voice neutral as he asked, "Is an explanation necessary?"

"Well, no," Felicity amended quickly. "I mean, there's nothing to explain. You're you and that's fine. I mean why wouldn't that be fine? You're Oliver Queen and I'm me and this isn't weird."

"Wait." Felicity raised a hand to stop him from responding. "By saying that this isn't weird maybe it sounded like I actually think it's weird. For the record, I don't." She motioned between them. "This is totally normal. And by this, I mean us being friends."

Oliver nodded perfunctorily. "Got it."

"Good." Felicity sank back into her seat.

"You explained that really well."

"Well, I've been practicing."

Oliver couldn't quite stop his small laugh at Felicity's response.

The rest of the drive was spent in comfortable silence with Felicity grumbling over the preset stations on his radio before finally just turning it off and settling back to watch the sun's evening rays fade into the horizon. She finally seemed to relax – the only sign of anxiety being the way her fingers played along the edges of the purse sitting on her lap.

Five minutes later, she reached into her purse to pull out her cell phone, mumbling something about double checking the arrival time. "Maybe I'll get lucky and the plane's been delayed."

Thirty seconds into the process, Felicity's fingers froze over the small screen.

"Oliver?"

Oliver hummed in response, eyes on the road in front of them.

"We have to turn around."

He frowned in confusion, turning his head to glance at her quickly. "What are you talking about?"

Felicity reached for the radio, turning it on to find a news radio station.

"-flights are being directed away from Starling Airport after a bomb threat was phoned in to local police." The announcer's voice filled the car as Felicity turned up the volume. "Police are refusing to comment, confirming only that a threat was made and is being investigated. Authorities are redirecting all flights as a precaution and are in the process of evacuating the area."

Oliver accelerated and swerved onto the shoulder.

"Are you going where I think you're going?

He only nodded in response.

Felicity sighed in resignation as she began to search the contents of her purse for a pair of flats. "My mother is going to kill me."


	9. Chapter 9

_The prompt was: "Thea meets Felicity fort the first time (other than that time in Walter's hospital room)."_

* * *

"Is this really necessary?"

Felicity glanced up from her computer screen to spare Oliver with the briefest of looks. Removing the pen from between her lips to quickly jot down a series of numbers, Felicity only nodded in response before turning back to her computer.

Oliver let out a quick huff of air through his nose – the only sign of his growing impatience – and stared at his own screen once more. With narrowed eyes, he pressed a few keys and clicked his mouse over the screen. The tiny virtual figure he'd been told was his character moved to where he'd indicated before being promptly attacked by other tiny figures he could only assume where misshapen trolls and promptly died a gruesome death. Again.

This time Oliver let his head fall backwards and resisted the urge to smash one fist against the keyboard. He heard Felicity stifle a chuckle beside him and tilted his head to fix her with an icy glare.

Felicity swallowed back a laugh. "It helps if you actually equip some weapons first and set up your shortcut keys with some magical attacks before you try to attack the massive hordes of trolls."

She rolled her chair closer to Oliver's and reached across him to grab the mouse. Brow furrowed, she expertly began assigning his character's settings. "You'll want something with enough damage to make up for your character's low level and maybe some magical enhancements too-"

"Felicity."

Oliver's low voice in her ear made her stop mid-sentence. She turned her head to the side and realised that by reaching across him she had all but put herself in his lap. Eyes wide, she focused on his chin. It was the least intimidating part of his face. "Yes?"

"You didn't bring me here to teach me how to play computer games, did you?"

Felicity cleared her throat. "Not exactly." She wouldn't admit that watching him peck at the keyboard in confusion had been the highlight of what had so far been a day intent on kicking her ass.

"What did you bring me down here for then?"

"I," Felicity hesitated. This was going to be like an admission of her own incompetency and every fibre of her being was screaming out against it. She forced herself to swallow her pride and do what needed to be done, "need your help catching someone I think has been trying to hack Queen Consolidated's systems for weeks," Felicity finished quickly and under her breath, the words almost stumbling over one another as she forced them out.

Oliver raised an eyebrow. "You think?"

Felicity swallowed and met his eyes. "I'm pretty sure."

A beat of silence passed between them in which Oliver merely blinked and Felicity forced herself not to squirm.

"I know," she said with more confidence. Inwardly, she scowled at the thought. The only thing that saved this from being utterly humiliating was the fact that whoever was launching the attack against the system hadn't succeeded.

Yet, an annoying little voice chirped inside her head.

Another moment passed before Oliver nodded. He broke their stare, glancing down at the sliver of space between them before raising his eyes to hers again this time with the quiver of a smirk on his lips. Felicity felt her cheeks flare with heat.

"That's a really embarrassing score right there, Oliver."

The unexpected remark came from behind them and had Felicity frantically pushing herself away from Oliver and straight back into her own chair so fast, she would have sent the chair rolling backwards if she hadn't managed a wild gab for the edge of the computer desk.

"I'm sorry," the voice continued, "that was really rude."

Oliver rolled his eyes, spinning his chair around to face their visitor. "Thea. You're early."

Felicity caught Thea's smiling reflection in the computer screen and took a quick panicked breath before turning herself around and standing up.

"Hi." Felicity raised one hand in greeting, first unsure of whether she was supposed to shake the younger girl's hand, then simply settling on an awkward short wave before dropping her hand back down.

"Thea this is Felicity," Oliver made the introductions with a quick motion of his hand between them. "Felicity meet Thea, my sister."

"I know who she is, Oliver," Felicity remarked quickly with a tight smile before softening her mouth as she turned to smile pleasantly at Thea.

"And I'm not nearly the self-involved teenager you seem to think I am, Ollie," Thea retorted, a sly smile paying on her lips. "I remember the _friend-_" she put emphasis on the word as only a younger sister could. Oliver managed to suppress another eye roll as Felicity glanced between them, "-who came to see Walter in the hospital." Her smile turned genuine at those words as she shifted her gaze away from her brother. "That was really nice of you by the way."

"It was nothing. Walter was kind to me and I was glad to see he was okay."

Thea nodded in understanding. She took a moment to look around the place, taking in the rows of computer screens, the many cups of half-finished coffee at every terminal, the bored teenager rifling through a gaming magazine as she sat watch at the employee desk.

"So," she dragged out the word and teetered back on her heels before swaying forward. "What exactly are we doing here? Besides losing badly at whatever game that is over there." She waved a hand in the direction of Oliver's computer and took a step forward to peer closer at the screen.

"Damn, Ollie," Thea remarked as she took a look at the stats splashed across the screen. "Now that's just sad."

"Thea," Oliver warned with no real heat, choosing to ignore everything else. "You're early. You're still supposed to be in school. Why aren't you?"

"Class got out early. wasn't feeling well and there was no sub given that she basically ran out mid-class to puke in the girl's washroom."

"Thea," Oliver's tone promised reprisals if she were being anything other than completely truthful.

Thea raised her hands. "I'm not making this up. Caitlyn was there – in the washroom I mean – and she saw the whole thing go down too."

"There's a pretty nasty stomach virus going around," Felicity interjected before Oliver could respond with another tonal variation on Thea's name.

Thea gave her a grateful look which Felicity returned with a light-hearted shrug before sitting back down in her seat.

"So," Thea repeated the long-drawn out word. "Now can I find out why Oliver's playing computer games-"

"Badly," Felicity tossed back.

"Badly," Thea allowed with a grin. Oliver's only response was a huff of air through his nose. "Why he's playing computer games badly in an archaic Internet café? Which, I might add, I didn't even know still existed."

"I'm thinking of becoming a professional gamer," Oliver retorted dryly at the same time as Felicity answered, "Work actually."

"Oh, okay," Thea said with a laugh. "That makes everything so much clearer."


	10. Chapter 10

_The prompt was: "Oliver and Felicity share a bed."_

* * *

"My college roommate was the one to get me into manga. She was obsessed. Instead of textbooks and workbooks – she was a biochem major – her bookshelves were stuffed full of manga and graphic novels and comic books. Her biggest regret in life – and she told me this one drunken night after a floor party – was that she couldn't read Japanese and had to wait for the English translations of everything. She used to say it was the single biggest strike against her 'geek cred' that she was so far behind. She dated a Japanese transfer student near the end of our freshman year just so she could improve her Japanese. I thought that was a little bit much, to be completely honest. And it work. I think there's a lesson in there somewhere."

"Felicity?"

Felicity hummed in response.

"Go to sleep."

"Can't."

"Try."

"Already have. Can't."

"Try harder."

Felicity heaved a heavy sigh and sat up in bed. Her hair fell loose onto her shoulders, swinging into her face as she slouched forward, and she reached up to tuck the long strands behind her ears. "It doesn't exactly work that way. I can't just will myself to sleep."

"Then count sheep."

"Can't do that either. I'll just end up overthinking that situation. Why are there so many sheep in one place? How big is this sheep-housing facility anyway? Is it outdoors? It had better be outdoors because keeping that many sheep indoors would not only be disgustingly smelly, but horribly inhumane. And what do I do with the sheep after I count them? Where do they go if their purpose is solely to be counted by me?"

"Felicity?"

"Yep?"

"I really need you to go to sleep."

"No. You need me to stop talking. I can just lie here quietly. You can tell me to shut up."

"I'm telling you to shut up."

Felicity ran her hands over her hair and leaned forward to peer over the foot of the bed onto the floor where Oliver had turned a blanket and the hotel bed's extra pillows into a makeshift cot. His face was illuminated by the pale light of the full moon shining through the balcony windows and gave just enough light for Felicity to make out that he'd already tossed aside the thin blanket that he'd grabbed from the closet. Even lying on his back on the floor, one hand under the pillow at his head, the other splayed across his stomach, Oliver looked more comfortable than Felicity felt and she was lying (well, sitting now) in a plush king size hotel bed with sheets of a higher thread count than she'd even thought possible. She wondered if that had anything to do with the years he'd spent sleeping on nothing but hard ground and even harder rock.

Oliver's hand shifted along his torso, revealing a sliver of bare skin (and one of the knotted scars on his hip, but she wasn't really looking that closely – really) between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his boxer-briefs as it pulled the shirt up. Felicity felt heat rise into her cheeks and she quickly straightened until her view of Oliver was once again obstructed by the foot of the bed.

She glanced over to the window, brow furrowing as she tried to remember whether or not they'd pulled the curtains closed before they'd settled in for the night. She could have sworn she'd done it right before she'd hopped into bed and had made some admittedly poor crack about werewolves coming out on nights of full moons and maybe Oliver should have stocked up on silver-tipped arrows.

Pulling the duvet back, Felicity slid her bare legs slowly out from under the sheets, careful not to make too much noise as she lowered her feet over the side of the bed closest to the balcony and tiptoed over to the large windows. One hand poised to pull the curtains back over and plunge the room back into darkness, Felicity paused for a moment to appreciate the sparkling lights of the city sprawled out below her.

"Felicity?"

She jumped slightly at the sound of Oliver's weary voice, hand thumping lightly against the glass as she spun around, pulling the curtain along with her and over her shoulder. She dropped it a second later, her hands falling down to tug at the hem of the tshirt she suddenly decided was much too short despite falling to mid-thigh.

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"I thought maybe the light was bothering you and I could have sworn I'd pulled the curtains closed earlier, but here they are completely open and the light's coming in right over your face which is something I only know because of non-creepy reasons. I mean, it's not like I watch you while you sleep or anything."

"It's fine."

Felicity turned to tug at the curtain again. "I'll close them. I don't mind."

"I prefer them open."

Felicity froze, a hand on either side of the window ready to pull both sets of curtains closed. "Oh."

She heard Oliver sigh softly behind her as she watched him get up in the reflection off the window. She watched him pull a hand over his face and over his short hair before crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"You want to tell me what's bothering you and keeping us both awake on a night before an important reconnaissance mission?" Oliver asked quietly.

Felicity let her hands fall away from the curtains, one hand trailing absently against the cool glass before settling against her side.

"You prefer them open," came her reply, her voice barely above a whisper. She couldn't make out more than his silhouette in the window's reflection, his face no more than a blur amidst city lights and streaks of cars, but she could imagine the furrow of his confusion on his brow. She dropped her forehead against the window for a moment before turning slowly to face Oliver.

"You prefer them open," she repeated a little louder, her voice clearer but still quiet. "And you're sleeping on the floor."

"I lost at rock/paper scissors."

"You suck at rock/paper/scissors. It wasn't a fair play and you knew it when you suggested it."

Oliver cocked his head at her ever so slightly. His bright blue eyes were made pale by the yellow light shining in from the sky, but they were no less piercing than usual and Felicity had to stop herself from fidgeting with the hem of her t-shirt again under his gaze. His normally inscrutable face was made more transparent by the combination of a long day and the late hour. She'd taken him by surprise, Felicity could read it in the slightest widening of his eyes and in the way he opened his mouth as if to form a reply that never quite made it past the edges of his lips.

Moments later he seemed to come to some conclusion because he unfolded his arms, face softening as he bent down to grab a pillow off the floor and tossed it onto the bed. Stepping sideways, he sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed at her expectantly. "Are you going to sleep standing up?"


End file.
